Indepth Arts News:
"Carsten Hoeller: Synchro System"
2000-11-22 until 2001-01-07
Fondazione Prada
Milan, ,
IT Italy
On Wednesday 22 November the Fondazione Prada inaugurated an exhibition conceived by
Carsten Höller, an artist who was born in Brussels in 1961 and now lives and works in Stockholm.
By stimulating unusual and surprising reactions, his works are intended to raise doubts and elicit
questions regarding the system underlying our existence.
The title of the exhibition >Synchro System< refers to the attempt to create an effect of
synchronization between the works and the visitors, who follow what might be described as an
experiential path. According to the artist, The premise of the exhibition is that all the works
comprise features capable of causing hallucinations. They involve the possibility of inducing a
change, which increases progressively as one proceeds through the exhibition.* The aim is to
make the visitors willing to accept a limited individual transformation when they come into contact
with the works and try them out on themselves. The result may be a sensation of perplexity and
overturning of certainties: All the works on display have in common the fact that they're machines
or devices intended to synchronize with the visitors in order to produce something together with
them .... Rather their 'meaning' may be found 'outside', in a place that may be reached together
with the observer.* In fact, >Synchro System< is also the title of a song by King Sunny Ade and
the whole exhibition may be regarded, says the artist, as music without music.
The exhibition begins with Maison Ronquières: The Laboratory of Doubt, 2000, an architectural
model in acrylic glass of a house-cum-slide in which six different floors are linked by a central
staircase inside the building, while eight slides (seven serving as connection within the house and
one leading from the interior to the exterior) allow visitors to reach floor level. This is a hypothesis for
a house that, because of the presence of the slides, recalls the work entitled Slides constructed by
the artist from 1998 onwards. Their dynamic unleashes a particular sensation in the public: Letting
yourself go down the slide is an experience that is similar to hallucination because, while you get on
it knowing precisely what's going to happen from the entrance to the exit, there is a moment of
letting go, of 'loosing yourself' in the course of the ride.*
The exhibition continues with Light Wall, 2000, a huge, spectacular installation approximately 19
metres in length, consisting of a wall made up of 3,552 25W incandescent light bulbs that emit
flashes of light with a frequency of 8.5 Hz per second. An acoustic background is synchronized with
the continuous turning on and off of the lamps, so that the whole space is dominated by the rhythm
of the intermittent light and the sound. This process has an effect on perception when the
spectators close their eyes, producing visual hallucinations (for example, colours and a sensation of
swaying) and subsequent reactions (for example, euphoric moods). The discovery of brainwaves,
made by the German neurologist Hans Berger in 1926, has revealed that the brain, like an electric
circuit, synchronizes with the stimuli coming from outside. While the wall of light bulbs represents a
way of travelling beyond what already exists,* the sight of all the technical equipment behind,
consisting of cables, dimmers and mixers, brings visitors back to reality: I'm interested in making the
structural aspect visible - in a way similar to the use of an instrument - in order to demystify the
whole situation. I want to seduce, but, at the same time, I aim to clarify just what seductive
mechanism is functioning.*
The Pinocchio Effect, 1994/2000, is located in a room where there are two chairs fitted with small
tables on which explanatory drawings and instructions for using electric vibrators (of the type used
for medical purposes) are displayed. After sitting down, visitors are asked to place the vibrator either
on their biceps or on their triceps, as shown in the instructions. When using the device, if they shut
their eyes and touch the tips of their noses, they will have the impression that the length of their
noses has changed. If the vibrator is placed on their triceps, their noses will seem to grow, like
Pinocchio's; if it is placed on their biceps, their noses will seem to retract into their heads.
Furthermore, thanks to the mental activity that controls this virtual deformation of the facial features,
it is possible to deliberately add a particular characteristic to one's nose, such as the round form
known as a button nose, or else create other imaginary forms for one's body.
The next stop is the Gantenbein Corridor, 2000, a passage about 30 metres in length in which
visitors gradually proceed from light to darkness, obliging them to deal with a loss of visual control
before re-emerging into the following space. The work's title derives from the protagonist of Max
Frisch's book Mein Name sei Gantenbein; pretending to be blind, he observes the difference
between what people say and what they do when they are convinced they are not being watched.
After the Gantenbein Corridor is the Upside Down Mushroom Room, 2000, a brightly-lit room that
consists of an upside down environment where the floor has become the ceiling and vice versa,
creating what is truly a place of wonders. Suspended from the ceiling by their stems and with their
caps - the diameters of which vary from 65 centimetres to about 3 metres - facing downwards, are
twelve gigantic reproductions of poisonous mushrooms, known as fly agaric, with red or orange
caps, white stems and gills. The mushrooms of diverse colours and heights - from 60 centimetres to
3 metres - rotate at different speeds, heightening their hallucinatory effect. Since they hang down
from the ceiling to below eye-level, when visitors move inside the space, passing between the
monstrous forms of the mobile circular caps of the mushrooms, they will tend to lose their bearings,
experiencing a sense of physical and psychological disorientation. In this work, the artist is making
a reference to the experiment conducted at the beginning of the twentieth century by George
Stratton, who for eight days running wore upside down spectacles. After passing through
intermediate stages in which the position of the image was radically different from its real one, on
the last day, although still wearing the glasses, he saw everything as he did before starting the
experiment: He had adapted once again to the continuous process of adjustment that is part of
sight, because the image on the retina is upside down before the brain deals with it. When you see
the world upside down, you're seeing the 'real' world.*
As in the case of Light Wall, when visitors leave the Upside Down Mushroom Room, they will be
able to see the exterior of the installation, consisting of a large structure in metal and the various
materials used for its construction. Yet another perceptual revelation, this concludes an exhibition
the aim of which is to shake the foundations, in the sense of not looking any longer at things in
the usual way, but as if one were under the effect of drugs, or under the influence of a particular
environmental situation.*
Registro is the title of the catalogue; published by the Fondazione Prada on the occasion of the
exhibition entitled Synchro System, it seeks to document the whole of Höller's output to date. Of
an analytical nature, it goes back in time from the present day to the late beginning of his artistic
career in the 1980s. This account is illustrated with pictures of his works and installations created
over the years, as well as those realized specially for this exhibition; in addition there are projects,
works executed in collaboration with other artists and publications. The volume contains a hitherto
unpublished interview of the artist by Germano Celant, as well as texts - other interviews,
statements, extracts from publications, quotations from critical essays - and brief descriptions of a
number of works by Höller and his character Baldo Hauser. * Interview of the artist with Germano
Celant in the book of the exhibition.
Related Links:
| |
Painterly Photographs: The Raymond E. Kassar Collection
Call to Artists: Mish, Mosh and More
LIGHT x EIGHT: THE HANUKKAH PROJECT 2000
Hannah Barrett and Henry Samelson
Will Barnet: A Timeless World
Picturing the Past: Piranesi to Pearlstein
Carsten Hoeller: Synchro System
PETER FISCHLI, DAVID WEISS: Visible World, Suddenly this Overview, Big Questions – Small Questions
der körpererfüllte Raum fort und fort : the body-filled space goes on and on
Manfred Pernice
THE SONGS OF MAYBELLE STAMPER
John Singer Sargent
Humanity Refigured:
Henry Moore and Postwar British Sculpture
Fabric of Enchantment: Indonesian Batik from the North Coast of Java
Walker Evans
Maurice, Prince of Orange
Close-Ups: Prints and Drawings by PUDLO PUDLAT
Indivisible: Stories of American Community
William Merritt Chase: Modern American Landscapes, 1886–1890
Anarrations: Anneke A. de Boer, Fow Pyng Hu, Gabriel Lester, Pia Wergius
OUT OF AFRICA: Sub-Saharan Traditional Arts
Still Life Paintings from the Collection
Night: Chris Faust and Mike Lynch
THE BEAUTY OF JAPAN PHOTOGRAPHED
Call to Artists: Invitation to take part in the EMAF 2001 with artworks and projects
Sound Installation by Emilia Telese & Tim Mark Didymus
Surprise - A Christmas Exhibition
Women In Photography International Creates Millennium Archive
Richard Nagler Photography Competition for 2000
|